I, too, sing America.
-- Speaker (Line 1)

Importance: This line opens and introduces the speaker (the “I”), the tone (confident and resilient), and the poem’s central themes. Beginning with “I, Too” establishes the speaker’s confidence and resiliency as the voice of Black cultural identity. At the same time, this line sets the poem up as a response to white supremacy, generally, and European poetic traditions, specifically. If this line is a response to white supremacy, then it also seeks to trouble and complicate what the “America” the speaker invokes might mean.

But I laugh / And eat well / And grow strong.
-- Speaker (Lines 5 – 7)

Importance: This line expresses the speaker’s resiliency and determination in the face of segregation and being made to “eat in the kitchen” (3). More than that, the speaker almost mocks the white people who exclude him from the table. The fact that he “laugh[s]” also suggests knowledge being withheld from the white...